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Republicans in Congress have been making behind-the-scenes efforts to pass major domestic legislation via the federal budget process. They include potential cuts to Medicaid and extending the 2017 Trump tax cuts. But even though its Congress job to pass a budget and set tax policy, most media outlets have been content to frame key elements of the legislation as being driven not by Congress but by the president. So the news media say that the purpose of the bill is to deliver Trumps agenda or to pass the Trump tax cuts. Many have even adopted President Donald Trumps trademark name for the legislation: his big, beautiful bill. Along with Casey Burgat and SoRelle Wyckoff Gaynor, I am co-author of a textbook titled Congress Explained: Representation and Lawmaking in the First Branch. In that book, it was important to us to highlight Congress clear role as the preeminent lawmaking body in the federal government. But since Trumps inauguration, Congress has ceded huge swaths of its policymaking responsibility to the president. That makes the medias focus on Trump unsurprising. And theres no denying that Trump has had enormous impact during his first 100 days in office. During that time, Congress has been unwilling to assert itself as an equal branch of government. Beyond policymaking, Congress has been content to hand over many of its core constitutional powers to the executive branch. As a Congress expert who loves the institution and profoundly respects its constitutionally mandated role, this renunciation of responsibility has been difficult to watch. And yet, Congress path to irrelevance as a body of government did not begin in January 2025. It is the result of decades of erosion that created a political culture in which Congress, the first branch of government listed in the Constitution, is relegated to second-class status. The Constitution puts Congress first The 18th-century framers of the Constitution viewed Congress as the foundation of republican governance, deliberately placing it first in Article 1 to underscore its primacy. Congress was assigned the pivotal tasks of lawmaking and budgeting because controlling government finances was seen as essential to limiting executive power and preventing abuses that the framers associated with monarchy. Alternatively, a weak legislature and an imperial executive were precisely what many of the founders feared. With legislative authority in the hands of Congress, power would at least be decentralized among a wide variety of elected leaders from different parts of the country, each of whom would jealously guard their own local interests. But Trumps first 100 days turned the founders original vision on its head, leaving the first branch to play second fiddle. Like most recent presidents, Trump came in with his party in control of the presidency, the House and the Senate. Yet despite the lawmaking power that this governing trifecta can bring, the Republican majorities in Congress have mostly been irrelevant to Trumps agenda. Instead, Congress has relied on Trump and the executive branch to make changes to federal policy and in many cases to reshape the federal government completely. Trump has signed more than 140 executive orders, a pace faster than any president since Franklin D. Roosevelt. The Republican Congress has shown little interest in pushing back on any of them. Trump has also aggressively reorganized, defunded or simply deleted entire agencies, such as the U.S. Agency for International Development and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. These actions have been carried out even though Congress has a clear constitutional authority over the executive branchs budget. Again, Congress has shown little to no interest in reasserting its power, even during recent budget talks. Many causes, no easy solutions Even so, Congress weakening did not begin with Trump. Theres no one culprit but instead a collection of factors that have provided the ineffectual Congress of today. One overriding factor is a process that has unfolded over the past 50 or more years called political nationalization. American politics have become increasingly centered on national issues, parties and figures rather than more local concerns or individuals. This shift has elevated the importance of the president as the symbolic and practical leader of a national party agenda. Simultaneously, it weakens the role of individual members of Congress, who are now more likely to toe the party line than represent local interests. As a result, voters focus more on presidential elections and less on congressional ones, granting the president greater influence and diminishing Congress independent authority. The more Congress polarizes among its members on a party-line basis, the less the public is likely to trust the legitimacy of their opposition to a president. Instead, congressional pushback sometimes as extreme as impeachment can thus be written off not as principled or substantive but as partisan or politicaly motivated to a greater extent than ever before. Congress has also been complicit in giving away its own power. Especially when dealing with a polarized Congress, presidents increasingly steer the ship in budget negotiations, which can lead to more local priorities the ones Congress is supposed to represent being ignored. But rather than Congress staking out positions for itself, as it often did through the turn of the 21st century, political science research has shown that presidential positions on domestic policy increasingly dictate and polarize Congress own positions on policy that hasnt traditionally been divisive, such as funding support for NASA. Congress positions on procedural issues, such as raising the debt ceiling or eliminating the filibuster, also increasingly depend not on bedrock principles but on who occupies the White House. In the realm of foreign policy, Congress has all but abandoned its constitutional power to declare war, settling instead for authorizations of military force that the president wants to assert. These give the commander-in-chief wide latitude over war powers, and both Democratic and Republican presidents have been happy to retain that power. They have used these congressional approvals to engage in extended conflicts such as the Gulf War in the early 1990s and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan a decade later. Whats lost with a weak Congress Americans lose a lot when Congress hands over such drastic power to the executive branch. When individual members of Congress from across the country take a back seat, their districts distinctly local problems are less likely to be addressed with the power and resources that Congress can bring to an issue. Important local perspectives on national issues fail to be represented in Congress. Even members of the same political party represent districts with vastly different economies, demographics and geography. Members are supposed to keep this in mind when legislating on these issues, but presidential control over the process makes that difficult or even impossible. Maybe more importantly, a weak Congress paired with what historian Arthur Schlesinger called the Imperial Presidency is a recipe for an unaccountable president, running wild without the constitutionally provided oversight and checks on power that the founders provided to the people through their representation by the first branch of government. Charlie Hunt is an assistant professor of political science at Boise State University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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The streaming service branding game of musical chairs continued this week when Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) announced the streaming platform Max would once again be called HBO Max, starting this summer. Its a complete brand reversal from a switch the company made back in 2023, when it ditched the HBO in its name for a head scratching Max. It immediately brought to mind this joke from 2024: It’s on Tubu. It’s literally on Heebee. It’s on Poodee with ads. It’s literally on Dippy. You can probably find it on Weeno. Dude it’s on Gumpy. It’s a Pheebo original. It’s on Poob. You can watch it on Poob. You can go to Poob and watch it. Log onto Poob right now. https://www.tumblr.com/orcboxer/745857099387584512/have-you-seen-the-new-show-its-on-tubu-its But for all the absurdity, the decision to resurrect the HBO name is the right one. And the company continued its good brand decision-making when it decided to unload a tidal wave of social content making fun of all this branding back and forth. @streamonmax Rolls off the tongue. original sound – Max Social strategist Jack Appleby said in his Future Social newsletter that this might actually be his favorite social campaign of the year so far. This is the kind of big decision agility more companies should aspire to, and create a culture that encourages it, said Appleby. What she said. pic.twitter.com/nUDClK8i9G— HBO (@HBO) May 14, 2025 Not only is it rare for a giant company to be this quick to make a good reversal on a bad decision, its equally rare that its self-aware enough to create genuinely funny content acknowledging how silly it all is. The power of sorry Remember when Skittles brought back its lime flavor in 2022? The brand livestreamed a 35-minute press conference in which it began to individually apologize to all 130,880 people who complained about limes removal from the classic Skittles bag. As hilarious as that was, it was also grounded in solid research. A study from Forrester that same year found that 41% of consumers would return to a brand that concedes to making a mistake and apologizes for it. @streamonmax POV: finding out about the rebrand from @John Cena #HBOMax #JohnCena #Peacemaker original sound – Max For HBO, the moment gave the brand a perfect excuse to utilize some of its iconic IPfrom Game of Thrones to The Wireto celebrate its name reclaimed. A name reclaimed. pic.twitter.com/PG6ycGaFwK— Game of Thrones (@GameOfThrones) May 14, 2025 The lesson here for other brands and companies ties back to a common refrain among top marketers: know how your brand is being discussed in culture, and act accordingly. While brands do have some power to dictate their own image, ultimately that image is a product of a back-and-forth between that and how fans and culture see them. Put the word out there. pic.twitter.com/fL118nqQIA— HBO (@HBO) May 14, 2025 HBOs self-awareness, and its ability to articulate that in a fast, funny way is a case study in how brands can say, We f**ked up and still win.
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Welcome to AI Decoded, Fast Companys weekly newsletter that breaks down the most important news in the world of AI. You can sign up to receive this newsletter every week here. Trumps Middle East tour is all about AI diplomacy The U.S. enjoys its superpower status mainly because of two things: its military and its financial influence. What were seeing in Trumps tour of the Middle East this week is the rise of another lever of geopolitical power: AI. And the competition between the U.S. and China in this realm is heating up. The U.S. is becoming more focused on exporting the best U.S. AI technology to other countries. Trumps lavish reception by heads of state in the Middle East this week can be explained in part by a major policy change: The Trump Commerce Department announced plans Tuesday to rescind Bidens AI diffusion rule, which had restricted the export of the most powerful AI chips to other countries, including those in the Middle East. The removal of the chip restrictions opens big new markets for American AI chipmakers (to wit, Nvidias stock rose 6% Tuesday) and could cause an increase in global investment in new AI data centers in the Middle East. Trump announced a series of U.S.-Saudi investment deals, including a partnership between Nvidia and Humain, a newly formed Saudi AI firm backed by the kingdoms sovereign wealth fund. The plan: to build AI data centers powered by several hundred thousand of Nvidias most advanced GPUs. The change in posture couldnt be starker. During Bidens presidency, the U.S. took a more cautious approach to AI. Biden-era chip export controls were seen as necessary to protect national security and preserve Americas edge in the AI race. Many in the tech industry supported them, at least when it came to chips. Restricting access to the best hardware, as one source put it, was one lever that the U.S. can pull to maintain its lead. The result: U.S. firms like OpenAI and Anthropic had access to elite silicon, while Chinese competitors like DeepSeek were left scrambling. But the game has changed since Biden was in office. The U.S. is no longer home to the only company (Nvidia) that can supply chips powerful enough to train state-of-the-art AI models. The Chinese multinational company Huawei is now shipping the Ascend 910C, a chip that rivals Nvidias best, along with a high-end server rack, the CloudMatrix 384, that competes with Nvidias GB200 NVL72. These systems are powering research inside China and are being pushed into global markets. That has raised alarms in D.C. The Commerce Department recently warned that organizations using Huaweis Ascend chips could be violating U.S. export rules, since the chips were likely manufactured with U.S.-origin technology. But enforcement will be difficult as more countries seek alternatives or try to hedge their bets between the U.S. and China. AI models and chips offer a new way for state actors to project power on the world stage. Thats whats unfolding in the Middle East this week. The Trump administration isnt so much trying to open new markets for Nvidia as it is trying to advance American AI as the prevailing standard around the world. GOP bill would freeze state AI laws for a decade A sweeping AI regulatory ban that would prevent states from overseeing the technology for a decade has been quietly inserted into a powerful Republican tax and spending bill currently under review by the House Energy and Commerce Committee. If passed in its current form, the bill would mark a major victory for the U.S.s largest tech companies, which argue that state-level regulations threaten innovation. It would impose a 10-year freeze on any law or regulation regulating artificial intelligence models, artificial intelligence systems, or automated decision systems. For companies like Meta, Microsoft, OpenAI, and Alphabets Google, the provision offers a way to sidestep pending or active state laws that are imposing stricter oversight than the federal government. Their pitch in recent months has been that any slowdown in AI development could allow Chinese competitors to outpace the U.S., a message thats resonating with many Republicans. Currently, these companies face a wave of state-level scrutiny. In this year alone, states have introduced at least 550 AI-related billscovering issues from deepfakes to algorithmic discriminationaccording to a tracker by the National Conference of State Legislatures. And its only May. The House committees draft bill could effectively nullify these efforts, a move that has alarmed AI safety advocates and critics of Big Tech, including leading Democrats. This is an outrageous abdication of congressional responsibility and a gift-wrapped favor to Big Tech that leaves consumers vulnerable to exploitation and abuse, said J.B. Branch, Big Tech accountability advocate at Public Citizen. This isnt leadership; it is surrendering to corporate overreach and abuse under the guise of protecting American innovation. Sen. Ed Markey of Massachusetts warned that the proposal will lead to a dark age for the environment, our children, and marginalized communities. Illinois Rep. Jan Schakowsky said the ban would allow AI companies to ignore consumer privacy protections, let deepfakes spread, and allow companies to profile and deceive consumers using AI. The bill is advancing through Congress via the budget reconciliation process, which allows certain legislation to bypass the Senate filibuster and pass with a simple majority. However, as Bloomberg reported, the provision may not survive this route, since Senate rules require that such measures be primarily fiscal in nature. Still, the proposal is offering insight into the GOPs broader stance on AI regulation. Vice President JD Vance has already cautioned that overregulation could kill the AI industrya sentiment that appears to be gaining traction among lawmakers. New Heartland/Rasmussen survey shows 60% of voters say AI companies hould pay for lost jobs A new survey from the The Heartland Institute and Rasmussen Reports finds that voters support the idea of AI companies paying reparations for the jobs their technology eliminates. A majority of those surveyed (62%) said that if AI advancements were to cause the elimination of millions of jobs, they would support a government program that taxes big technology companies and then uses the funds to provide every American with an income large enough to pay for basic necessities like housing, clothes, and food. The finding suggests the voting public is increasingly aware that AI could threaten their livelihoods sooner rather than laterand that a serious public discussion about the need for a universal basic income (UBI) may be around the corner. UBI is a type of social welfare program in which all people in a society receive regular, unconditional cash payments, regardless of their employment status. Adding urgency to the discussion, the World Economic Forum predicts that AI and automation could lead to the loss of 83 million jobs globally by 2027. More AI coverage from Fast Company: Elon Musks DOGE is launching a new AI retirement system. It was built under Biden Polling giant Morning Consult is using AI to help dig through survey data Anaconda wants to become the GitHub of enterprise open-source development Going AI first appears to be backfiring on Klarna and Duolingo Want exclusive reporting and trend analysis on technology, business innovation, future of work, and design? 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